Feline AIDS

Another important discovery was the recognition of feline AIDS in 1988 by veterinarian Neils Pedersen and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. The disease is caused by a virus called the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). FIV is usually transmitted during a fight through the saliva of an infected cat that bites another cat, puncturing the skin. Because cat fights generally occur outdoors, feline AIDS is found mainly in cats that are allowed to roam freely or in multiple-cat households that adopt wild or homeless cats. In many areas of the United States where there is a large population of freely roaming cats, about 5 per cent of the feline population is infected. Since the disease was first diagnosed in 1988, veterinarians have found feline AIDS in cats throughout the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

The virus and the disease pattern are similar to that of human AIDS, but cats do not get the human virus, and people are not susceptible to the cat virus. Veterinarians had observed the symptoms of FIV infection for many years, but investigators did not recognize the disorder as a type of AIDS until the symptoms of human AIDS were recognized as a disease.

Like human AIDS, feline AIDS attacks the body's disease-fighting immune system. The feline disorder has two stages. The first stage begins when a cat is infected through a bite. About four weeks after the initial infection, the cat becomes ill with a fever but usually recovers. The second stage begins about two to four years after infection and is marked by the appearance of infections in the mouth and respiratory system and on the skin. These infections are called opportunistic because they afflict only cats whose immune systems are too weak to fight off the infection-causing microbes. Death from these AIDS-related infections is inevitable.

According to veterinarians, cat owners can best protect their cats from FIV infection by not allowing the cats to run free. If a cat is kept indoors even with an infected animal, the likelihood of transmission is small because indoor cats rarely bite each other.